When I was a kid, I loved coloring Easter eggs. A wonderfully messy process, and all the bright colors on the shells. Then we'd have the family Easter egg hunt, and the fun of finding them. When I got older, my big sister and I would help hide them, then watch our younger siblings hunt them.
And then we had all those hardboiled eggs to eat. Even with a big family, we got a bit tired of hardboiled eggs by the time they were gone.
As a childless adult living alone, I don't have any reason to color eggs. Still, every Lent I'd look at the egg coloring kits and miss the fun. And then I got to looking at pickled eggs, and got to thinking, and looking at recipes....and now I have some colored eggs in several different flavors at Easter.
Follow me below the yolk squiggle for recipes.
I make small batches of tea eggs and two flavors of pickled eggs each year. First, hardboil 10 eggs. Stop at 12 minutes; they'll be just hardboiled then. You don't want them overdone, or they'll get tough simmering in the pickles.
Yellow eggs:
1 cup cider vinegar
1/2 cup water
1/2 tbsp. salt
1/2 tsp. turmeric
1/2 tsp. hot Chinese mustard
1 tbsp. juice from jar of jalapeno slices
1/2 tbsp. green Tabasco sauce
palmful onion flakes
dash black pepper
A bit of garlic powder wouldn't hurt
3 peeled boiled eggs
Combine liquids and spices in enamel or nonstick pan, heat to simmer. Add eggs. Simmer about 15 minutes. Put eggs in pint plastic tub or glass jar. Pour in pickle bath to cover eggs. Let cool a little while, then refrigerate for a couple of days.
Beet eggs:
Liquid from small can beets, about 1/2 cup
1 cup cider vinegar
2-3 tbsp. brown sugar
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
palmful onion flakes
dash black pepper
12 whole cloves
3 peeled boiled eggs
Combine liquids and all spices but the cloves, heat to simmer. Stud eggs with cloves, add to liquid. The rest as for the yellow eggs.
Tea eggs:
Make a large mug of very strong tea. I use 4 teabags, Lapsang Souchong because I like the hint of smoke, but the cheap black tea I buy to dye socks with made good tea eggs too. My big mug is about 9 oz. YMMV.
1/8 cup soy sauce
1/2 tsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. 5 spice powder
dash cinnamon
dash black pepper
3 boiled eggs, shells cracked. I crack them pretty much all over, then abuse them a bit with the pointy end of a can opener.
Liquids etc., simmer. Eggs etc. You know the drill by now.
And the 10th egg? Well, I have the beet slices or chunks that I drained the liquid off of. Those, and a chopped egg, and some greens..,lessee, what salad dressings have I got in the fridge?
The yellow eggs are bright yellow on the surface, with a sharp spicy flavor. the beet eggs are a brownish red outside, with lovely pink whites inside. Their flavor is sweet and sour. The tea eggs are pale beige marbled with dark brown, salty and savory. So I've got some grown up Easter eggs to enjoy for the next few days. Hope they sound good to some of you too.